About 44 meticulously written minutes On Thursday, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke on the floor of the Senate about his Jewish identity, his love for the State of Israel, his horror at the wanton slaughter of Israelis on October 7 and his views on apportioning blame. for the Gaza massacre, saying it was primarily the fault of Hamas terrorists.

Then Mr. Schumer, a New York Democrat and the highest-ranking elected Jew in American history, said Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was an obstacle to peace and called for new elections in the world’s only Jewish state .

The opposition was not nearly as scrupulous.

Within minutes, the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives demanded an apology. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky used Netanyahu’s nickname and declared: “Make no mistake: the Democratic Party does not have an anti-Bibi problem. It has an anti-Israel problem.” And the Republican Jewish Coalition declared that “the most powerful Democrat in Congress was stabbing the Jewish state in the back.”

The months that followed the October 7 massacre and the ensuing, disastrously deadly war in Gaza have been unbearable for American Jews, caught between a tradition of liberalism that has dominated much of Jewish politics and an anti-Israel backlash from politically left. which has left many feeling isolated and sometimes persecuted.

But Mr. Schumer’s speech was potentially a turning point in a much longer political process, initially followed by Republicans but recently joined by left-wing Democrats — to make Israel a partisan issue. Republicans, as they see it, would be the party of Israeli supporters. The Democrats would, as the rising left wants, be the party of Palestine.

At the root of this divide lies a fundamental question: is support for the Jewish state separable from support for Israel’s democratically elected government? Republicans have said no for years. The Democratic left increasingly agrees, but from a different perspective: Israel is bad no matter who rules the country.

“The pressure – electoral, social, cultural – on American Jews right now to declare themselves” on the justice of the war in Gaza and on the legitimacy of the Israeli prime minister has been “relentless, relentless and at times downright cruel,” said David. Wolpe, a prominent rabbi in Los Angeles and visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School.

Mr. Schumer’s speech and subsequent partisan backlash have intensified that pressure.

“It is impossible to understate the seismic event that this was,” said Matthew Brooks, former chief executive of the Republican Jewish Coalition, who made clear that the group would use the speech to drive Jewish voters to the Republican Party.

While Republicans accused Mr. Schumer of trying to force elections at a time when most Israelis support and focus on the war against Hamas, the Senate leader was in fact aware of Israeli public opinion. He noted that “so many Israelis have lost confidence in the vision and direction of their government,” a phrase supported by opinion polls that indicate Netanyahu is deeply unpopular. Mr Schumer was also cautious when he said elections should only be held “once the war begins to subside” and that he would respect the outcome.

Jewish Democrats have long maintained that support for a Jewish state in the traditional homeland of the Jewish people is inherent to their identity, regardless of the government in power in Jerusalem. Mr. Schumer tried to make that point from the beginning of Thursday’s speech, explaining that his last name is derived from the Hebrew word for “guardian.” He is, he said, a “summer Israel – a guardian of the people of Israel.”

But his speech came at an incendiary moment, when support among Democrats is waning for what Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent of Vermont, calls “Netanyahu’s war,” and loud voices on the left say the state of Israel is inherently wrong: a Netanyahu’s ‘war’. settler-colonialist invader incompatible with the rights and sovereignty of the Palestinian people who lived there before Israeli independence in 1948.

“You have this divide where the overwhelming majority of American Jews support Israel, support its right to exist as a Jewish state, and an increasingly vocal minority do not support Israel as a Jewish state and reject what happened in 1948 to ensure that the Jewish state state survived,” Michael J. Koplow, chief policy officer of the Israel Policy Forum, a Washington-based research group, said from Israel on Friday.

He continued: “Schumer needed to maintain a way to criticize the Israeli government without going anywhere near Camp No. 2, which is why he spent so much time early on talking about Hamas’s guilt and his love for Israel.”

But at such a political moment, any notion of “nuance” — a word Mr. Schumer used when he lamented the “silent majority” of Jews whose “nuanced views have never been represented in discussions about the war in Gaza” — was most likely yes. don’t collapse.

Republicans made no secret of their intention to use Schumer’s words against him. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has distributed emails demanding that vulnerable Democrats up for re-election this year speak out against Schumer’s positions.

Norm Coleman, a former Republican senator from Minnesota who went to public school with Mr. Schumer in New York and is now chairman of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said Friday that the bipartisanship that still existed around support for Israel could be nullified done by Mr. Schumer’s indictment of Israel. Mr Netanyahu and his call for new elections. He accused Schumer of political motives that stemmed specifically from President Biden’s problems with Arab Americans in the crucial swing state of Michigan.

“I don’t think Schumer speaks for American Jews,” Mr. Coleman said. “I think he’s speaking as the majority leader of a Democratic Party that is now so concerned about the left, so concerned about Michigan, that he’s giving a speech telling the democratically elected government of a democratic country that they should no longer be in government. are.”

Even some centrist Jewish Democrats, such as Rep. Brad Schneider of Illinois, condemned Schumer’s call for new elections in Israel as interference in the affairs of what he called “the region’s only true democracy.”

For many older liberal Jews, however, Mr. Schumer’s words were a tonic. They expressed their shared pain over the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, and their frustrations with an Israeli government with far-right ministers, whom Mr. Schumer mentioned by name, who adamantly oppose any concessions for peace. or Palestinian sovereignty. His words also reflected Democrats’ increasing desire to use what Mr. Schumer called “leverage” tied to billions of American tax dollars flowing to the Israeli military.

Daniel G. Zemel, a Reform rabbi in Washington, DC, and a proponent of ‘liberal Zionism’, said Mr. Schumer’s prescriptions were “exactly what American Jews should be asking for.”

“There needs to be a different approach,” he said, pushing back on those who called Mr. Schumer’s prescriptions antidemocratic. “As a rabbi and as a Jew, I have the right and obligation to say what I want Israel to be in this world.”

Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and the dean of the members of the Jewish Home, posted on social media that Mr. Schumer “is right,” adding: “Prime Minister Netanyahu has become an obstacle to peace and the two-state solution.”

Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois is one of those progressive Jewish Democrats who feels caught in a vice between activists who harass her as “Genocide Jan” and her personal belief that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state, side by side with a sovereign Palestinian. stands. It is, she acknowledged, a “charged moment” for politicians like herself, but she said Friday that Mr. Schumer spoke for a majority of Jews in the United States and Israel.

She fiercely rejected the idea that Mr. Schumer was encroaching on Israeli democracy, noting that Mr. Netanyahu spoke to Congress in 2015 to pressure President Barack Obama to abandon his nuclear deal with Iran.

“There’s a hunger right now for a different path, and that’s what Schumer had the courage to talk about,” she said. “Most Israelis and American Jews understand the importance and essential role that the United States plays, and we feel like Bibi is thumbing his nose at us.”

When President Biden declared this weekend that he was drawing a “red line” on Israel’s military action in Gaza, he appeared to be trying to raise the potential costs for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as their relationship plummets to new depths.

But he never said what exactly would happen if Netanyahu ignored him and continued Israel’s military operation by invading the southern city of Rafah, a move that Biden has — repeatedly — said would be a big mistake. It is unclear whether he hesitated because he did not want to indicate what response he might prepare, or because he did not want to be criticized if he backed away from whatever action he was considering.

Or perhaps he remembered, given his long experience in the Senate and the White House, that drawing red lines turned out badly for Barack Obama when it came to Syria and for George W. Bush when it came to North Korea and Iran . America’s allies in the Middle East were stunned by Obama’s reversal. It was later judged that Mr Bush had invaded a country that had no nuclear weapons – Iraq – while the North was testing its first nuclear weapon under his watch.

Mr. Biden’s line drawing was immediately dismissed — and matched — by Mr. Netanyahu, who shot back: “You know, I have a red line. Do you know what the red line is? That October 7th will no longer happen.” The prime minister was, of course, referring to the Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people in Israel, left dozens of others as hostages and sparked a war now in its sixth month.

Such talk of red lines is not exactly new: leaders of all stripes, from the leaders of democracies to brutal autocrats, often invoke the phrase to describe steps that another country should not even consider because the consequences would be more painful than they could imagine. The strange thing in this case is that the lines are drawn by two allies who regularly celebrate how close they are, but whose dialogue is starting to become somewhat toxic.

The seemingly obvious implication of Mr. Biden’s threats was that if the Israelis went ahead with their plans and carried out another military operation with many civilian casualties, Mr. Biden would, for the first time, impose restrictions on how Israel could use the weapons that the United States has used. States supply. So far, Biden has rejected such a move — even as Washington puts conditions on almost every arms sale, including demanding that Ukraine not fire U.S. missiles, artillery or drones at Russia.

But Mr. Biden appears to be slowly reconsidering his aversion to restrictions on how Israel could use the weapons it buys, some U.S. officials say. He has not made a decision and appears to still be debating the issue in his own mind, according to officials who spoke with him.

The White House will not discuss the subject publicly. During a briefing with reporters on Air Force One on Monday, as Mr. Biden headed to New Hampshire for a campaign event, a White House spokesman declined to say what price Israel would pay if it defies Mr. Biden would exceed. And Mr. Biden himself ruled out cutting off defensive weapons such as Iron Dome, the U.S.-Israeli missile defense project that has intercepted short-range missiles fired into Israel by Hamas.

“It’s a red line, but I’m never going to leave Israel,” he said in an interview with MSNBC last week. “Israel’s defense is still crucial. So there’s no red line: I’m going to cut off all the weapons, so they don’t have an Iron Dome to protect them.”

“But there are red lines that if he crosses,” he added, drifting away from completing the sentence – or the threat. “You can’t let another 30,000 Palestinians die.”

By using the red line, with its vivid suggestion of some kind of tripwire, Mr Biden also waded into dangerous territory for American presidents. Over the past few decades, Mr. Biden’s predecessors have repeatedly described lines that America’s adversaries or allies could not cross without inviting the most dire consequences.

And time and time again they have regretted it.

Consider Obama’s statement in August 2012, when intelligence reports suggested that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria may be preparing to use chemical weapons against his own people. Mr. Obama had avoided internal unrest in Syria, but one day in the White House press room he told reporters that if Mr. Assad were to move or use large quantities of chemical weapons, he would cross a “red line” and ” my calculation would change’. .”

By the spring of 2013, it was clear that Assad was doing just that, and when a senior Israeli intelligence official stated as much, the Israeli government had to distance itself from the comments, fearing that the intelligence findings would ensnare Mr. Assad. Obama came in. By early summer it became clear that the weapons were being actively used, but Obama called off a planned attack on Assad’s facilities because he feared it could lead to even more chemical attacks — and drain the United States . in a new major conflict in the Middle East.

Mr. Bush found himself in a similar situation in 2003 when he declared that he would not “tolerate” a nuclear-armed North Korea. That summer, he used the same word to say he would not tolerate Iran gaining the ability to build a nuclear weapon.

During his presidency, the North Koreans tested a nuclear weapon — they have since tested five more — and the Iranians have made progress toward that capability. And while the United States has both tightened sanctions and threatened military action, the North now has such a substantial arsenal that U.S. officials have all but given up on the idea that it will ever disarm.

Iran’s capabilities — which seemed neutralized, at least for a while, after Obama struck a nuclear deal in 2015 — have surged again since President Donald J. Trump abandoned that deal three years later. Today, the country has a stockpile of enriched uranium that can be turned into weapons fuel within days or weeks, and a weapon within about a year.

The Australian letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australian bureau. To register to receive it by email. This week’s issue is written by Natasha Frost, reporting from Auckland, New Zealand.

Within months, New Zealand is likely to lose about 20 percent of its journalists and television news producers.

“We’ve seen thousands of cuts in New Zealand for at least a decade,” says Colin Peacock, the producer and presenter of the Radio New Zealand show Mediawatch. “This feels like a turning point.”

Last week, Newshub, the news division of Three, a television station owned by Warner Bros Discovery, announced it would close as of June 30. That means the elimination of more than 200 jobs and the death of one of the country’s two free TV news stations. in New Zealand.

Today its main competitor, TVNZ, said it would also cut dozens of jobs. On the chopping block are two daily newscasts; Sunday, a long current affairs show; and Fair Go, a consumer rights program that has been running for 47 years.

Many of the shows that have survived the ax so far, such as Seven Sharp and Breakfast, are lighter fare, with clearer commercial viability. “They keep the programs where they can put integrated ads (basically sponsored content),” Mr. Peacock said.

At both outlets, executives cited challenging economic conditions and declining advertising revenue, issues that have also affected the media industry in the United States. TVNZ, for example, expects to lose 15.6 million New Zealand dollars, about $9.6 million, for the year ending in March.

“There was no single trigger that caused this,” James Gibbons, a regional director at Warner Bros Discovery, told local news media in New Zealand of Newshub’s closure. “Rather it was a combination of negative events in New Zealand and globally. The consequences of the economic downturn have been severe and the recovery has not materialized as expected.”

What is lost in the New Zealand news media landscape appears impossible to recover, says Duncan Greive, media commentator and founder of The Spinoff, a New Zealand news channel.

“So many really dedicated people – some at the very top of the profession in this country – are likely to lose their jobs,” he said. “And it’s hard to imagine them doing similar work with similar impact in this country.”

New Zealand currently has work approximately 1,600 journalistsAccording to the country’s census, the country’s population is approximately 5.2 million.

These journalists do a lot with little: in addition to the two television channels, New Zealand has almost two dozen daily newspapers, as well as two Sunday newspapers; a selection of news magazine brands including The Listener and North and South; and several independent publishers, some digital-only, such as Metro and The Spinoff.

Smaller outlets are also under pressure. The Pantograph Punch, an online arts and culture magazine founded in 2006, announced this week that this was the case goes on an indefinite hiatus from the end of the month due to a lack of money, including from public funding agencies.

Unlike some other Commonwealth countries – Australia, Britain and Canada, for example – New Zealand does not have a fully integrated public broadcaster for radio and television. Although TVNZ is a state-owned company, it is commercially funded through advertising. (Radio New Zealand is the country’s only fully publicly funded broadcaster.)

Some, including Leader of the Opposition Chris Hipkins, have urged the government to take action to give TVNZ more support. But in comments to reporters, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon dismissed that possibility. “We are unlikely to see further ownership of media assets,” he said.

“Their instinct is not to intervene in the media market at all,” Mr Peacock said of the current coalition government, led by the centre-right National Party. “They recognize that the news media play an important role in democracy, keeping people informed, but they really don’t want to commit to any kind of bailout.”

It was hard to imagine any individual or company stepping forward to save the day or support the country’s news media, Mr. Greive said.

“These decisions are final and do not appear to be a cry for help,” he said. “They don’t want help because they can’t imagine a world where they could ever afford it.”

Here are the stories of the week.

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